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A Weblog Dedicated to the Discussion of the Christian Faith and 21st Century Life

A Weblog Dedicated to the Discussion of the Christian Faith and 21st Century Life___I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, –that unless I believed, I should not understand.-- St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)

Monday, December 15, 2014

Are Christians Hypocrites?

Exactly what constitutes hypocrisy, however, is something we should think about carefully. There are of course obvious examples. One might think first of the well publicized cases of Christian superstars who are caught doing the very things they preached against. Sure… that's hypocrisy. The offense seems to be not simply that these people did something immoral, but that they had been vocal opponents of that very kind of behavior. We can think of other kinds of clear-cut cases as well. If, for example, a church's layleader made an impassioned speech encouraging others to tithe, and then it was disclosed that this person had not given a dime to the church in years, most of us would identify that as a form of hypocrisy.

In truth, however, these blatant cases aren't particularly common. Most of us are just folks trying to live a good life. We're aware of the fact that we don’t always live like we should, and when we do, our motives are not always entirely pure. Can this rightly be called hypocrisy?

David's post is a good read. He offers a good review of the book and gives some insightful comments of his own on the subject of hypocrisy.

When someone tells me that they don't go to church because there are too many hypocrites, I always respond, "Well, come to our church. We'll take one more."